zenpundit.com

TAKING A 2×4 TO THE METAPHORICAL HEAD OF VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

Ouch! At The SWJ Blog, LTC. Bob Bateman, the military historian who debunked the No Gun Ri “massacre” myth from the Korean War ( and thus, no Lefty), savages Victor Davis Hanson. Brutal. I wonder if Hanson will feel forced to respond?

Hat tip to Dave Dilegge.

ADDENDUM:

Yep, he did

Dave Dilegge informs me that he has temporarily pulled the link to Bateman but suggested this one at HNN. Sorry for any inconvenience to readers.

PAKISTAN’S REAL CRISIS

Is not that the military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf has imposed martial law. Much like Poland under Jaruzelski or the recent crackdown in Burma, martial law in Pakistan was not a transition from one kind of state to another but rather a shift from the hypocrisy of a velvet glove to the honesty of an iron fist. Pakistan is no more a dictatorship today than it was a month earlier.

Pakistanis, it must be said, are not universally outraged by dictatorship per se. The wily and ruthless General Zia ul- Haq was a fairly popular figure in his day. Wild-eyed deobandi fanatics, opposed to Musharraf’s regime, long for a Sharia-state tyranny that would be far more brutal and incompetent than is the current government in Islamabad. Nor is the growing corruption of the army in Pakistan the central problem; Benazir Bhutto’s party, the democratic faction, once looted government coffers with gusto while wrecking the economy. Her father, once Prime Minister but later executed by Zia, was a notable menace to the concept of good governance.

Pakistan’s central problem is a crisis of legitimacy. Nationalism is a waning force these days and even anti-Indian feeling is sustained by a marriage of nationalism with Islamist radicalism. Once, a Pakistani leader could declare that Pakistani’s ” would eat grass” to make their country the nuclear equal of Hindu India. No more. Musharraf’s fear of “national suicide” did not rouse his countrymen to his side and there are some, even in the army, who would hold up jihad above the nation. Well above.

Without nationalism or state competence, people fall back on primary loyalties. Pakistan has no intrinsic reason to exist unless it can be welded together in men’s minds.

INSTANT HISTORY

Picked up both of these on a lark on Saturday, as I cruised through Border’s with The Son of Zenpundit, who was getting some independent reader level books about Spider-Man fighting -well- some villain or other. The usual suspects.

Any thoughts from readers as to how high these tomes merit being placed on the “Must read” pile ? I’m currently innundated with things to read, so prioritizing is a must.

ARABISM, NATION-STATES AND ISLAM

This should intrigue readers with a range of research interests and disciplinary perspectives. Reading it right now as I post.

Dr. Christine Helms – “Arabism And Islam: Stateless Nations And Nationless States” (PDF)

Hat tip to Colonel Lang.

RECOMMENDED READING

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday…where blog reaction is the attraction!

Sean Meade – “Catch-22“

Sean puts away his proofreader’s blue pencil and dons the Hat of Literary Criticism to make an (accurate) point about generational zeitgeist.

Global Guerillas – “ON OPEN SOURCE GUERRILLA VANGUARDS“

Great theory post by John Robb. I’d say that the Maoists exploited a latent crisis of legitimacy rather than created one “ex nihilo”. Both the Chinese Communists and the Kuomintang were a reaction against the collapse of the Q’ing and the inability Yuan Shih-kai and various warlords to step into the breach. The history of China from the Boxer Rebellion to Mao’s triumph in 1949 was a laboratory for questions of 4GW, state-building, state failure, foreign intervention, guerilla warfare theory, counterinsurgency and many of the issues with which statesmen and military commanders are wrestling with in Iraq.

Shane and Curtis at Dreaming5GW – “5GW in Clausewitz’s Trinity” and “John Robb: “On Open Source Guerrilla Vanguards”

Respectively, Shane is expanding on the exchange here over Fabius Maximus and Curtis delves into the above post by John. Speaking as a historian, what we know about about Soviet and American decision-making during the Cuban missile crisis offers a serious caution regarding game theory assumptions of rationality. Excomm was an exercise in attempting rationality but the “fog of war” was so dangerously opaque as to render such intentions almost moot. The problem of information was redoubled on the Soviet side due to the nature of the Soviet system and Khrushchev’s political conflicts within the Presidium

Dave at The Glittering Eye – “Obama’s Proposal to Break the Impasse on Iran (Updated)“

Dave gives his trademark serious evaluation to Senator Obama’s proposal to give a presidential-level investment in diplomatic talks with Iran and he’s right about Obama’s monocausal explanation of Iranian behavior.

While I am in favor of serious diplomatic negotiations withIran, I’m not crazy about a foreign policy neophyte like Obama a) taking a personal, presidential, lead in negotiating strategy – that’s what the secretary of state is for when the president is green; and b) staking a brand-new administration’s prestige on the outcome of negotiations with as difficult and hostile a diplomatic adversary as the Iranians. We don’t need to unilaterally ratchet up the pressure on ourselves for a deal when enough real-world, strategic concerns abound.

Dan of tdaxp – “Automaticity (Automation of Schemata)”

Dan’s research is investigating a crucial cognitive process, one without which we’d have been hard-pressed to have gotten out of the stone age.

Shlok has been published in Pragati: The Indian National Interest Review with an article on Naxalite Rage ( no link). Congrats, Shlok !!

CKR – “The Strategery Article“

Cheryl Rofer identifies strategic paralysis at the heart of the Bush administration, for which she blames the president. I agree, though for different reasons. One reason would be the self-crippling, insularity of the information-flow around Mr. Bush and his key advisers (which ultimately, is also Bush’s fault. A president pretty much gets the national security process he really wants to have). Only part of this distortion is ideological, much of it is court politics to keep control of the king’s ear, so to speak. Hadley’s origins as a national security expert, for example, were in the Kissingerian-dominated Ford administration, yet he reputedly leads the pack to “shoot the messenger” on Iraq, among the inner circle.

That’s it!